Filtering by Category: Retro Reviews

Though its iconography may have been appropriated by the alt-right, They Live remains one of the most radical and unapologetically leftist films ever produced in the shade of Hollywood’s superstructure. In a world plagued by centrism and civility, They Live is still a much-needed reminder that debates don’t win revolutions. When literal Nazis are in the streets, appealing to both sides or “reaching across the aisle” is, to quote from the film, like pouring perfume on a pig.

Rob Zombie’s two films work together to form a very complex and thoughtful exegesis on American serial killer mythologies, with the first film primarily exploring social, familial and institutional systems while the sequel delves into the intricate and vexing connections between violence and un- (or sub) consciousness.

Candyman and Farewell to the Flesh both strike me as a movies that could’ve made for a fascinating interrogation of vengeance, racism, and historical erasure, but end up being a mangled White Savior™ stories where the villain is also the victim, one whose story is refurbished as a weapon against him.

Having set out to make a nearly shot-for-shot remake, Van Sant’s Psycho only barely strays from the original. That seems to be the purpose, though. In interviews he has talked endlessly about his desire to show Hollywood what a genuine remake is like.

Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Carrie is a much kinder version of the story. It is a version that understands Carrie’s pain and one that goes out of its way to give every character a sense of humanity, softening the blow of the story’s cruelty while making its evils sharper in their recognizability. Does this make it a better film?

Brian Peck and James Karen star in director Dan O’Bannons’s Return of the Living Dead

Retro Review by Nathan Smith

Nowhere is the evolution and mutation of the zombie and its corresponding genre more apparent than in Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead (1985). Loosely adapted from a novel of the same name by John Russo, Romero’s co-writer on Night of the Living Dead, Return is a horror-comedy with an upfront awareness of the genre’s boundaries and peripheries.

The Alien and No-Face chillingly epitomize the absolute black void of a cultureless environment. They represent not only the void of space, and the existential dread of our ultimate comeuppance, but the fact that this hopeless and infinite void is actually looking back at us with a judging glare.

Jeff Bridges stars in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Retro Review by Nathan Smith

Tucker is not about the real Tucker or even the product he made, but about the image he made and sold of himself, his car, and a certain post-war way of life. That’s what any car dealer or filmmaker sells us: aspirations, ideals, and the possibility of independence. In Tucker, the image that Coppola sells us of himself is identical to Preston Tucker, and I'd argue that Coppola used that image in order to build a case for himself.

In a vast counter to Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which was released two years before, Ikiru posses an exuberant amount of empathy for a two and a half hour film. This empathy seems fixated in a sort of lexicon — more of an indictment on ourselves than on the characters.

Whether you view it simply as a necessity needed to live or as something to truly be treasured, we are all connected by food. That’s why it was a work of genius in 1985 for Juzo Itami to create a Japanese film that uses food as a way to meditate on human behavior.

Perfection is something unattainable and merely idealistic, but there is something truly absolute about 2001, a transcendence of purity. Its curious yet forthright, audacious yet small, fearsome yet gentle. The contradictions fit its creator, again, a man filled with self-assurance of his craft but anxious of his role in daily discourse.

This is what’s to love about it. Nothing is perfect, but nothing is 2001 either.

It’s this conflict--between the impulse to comment on real events and the fundamental unreality of movies--that’s at the heart of Miguel Gomes’s 2015 three-volume feature, Arabian Nights (As Mil e uma Noites, in its original Portuguese).

The revolutionary part of Creed is that it exposes the haunting nature of society’s expectations for men, and opens a dialogue of what that means, rather than doing anything to “solve” or “fix” it. Manhood is no longer measured by strength and power, rather, it requires a degree of vulnerability never exhibited by men before in popular culture.

The Quiet Man seems a little off from some of Ford's more interrogative work — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and The Searchers — where he took this idea of the American West and challenged it both in its characters and how people perceived this "idyllic past." But this film also doesn't want to — or have to be — like that. The charm is in the intensity of these characters and the fulfillment — and execution — of their various passions.

Paul Newman (as well as Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy), stars in Pixar's Cars

Retro Review by John McAmis

For the past eleven years, I have gotten a lot of flack for placing Cars in the upper echelon of Pixar’s filmography. Most people don’t like this. But I have only a undying love for this odd, clunky 2006 animated film.

If you're scanning through reviews to see if you want to watch this movie, don't watch it just yet. Now's not a good time. If you want to truly appreciate this movie, wait for a day when your mind is clear.

The Apu Trilogy has become so revered because it asks us to grapple with difficult moments in the main character’s life, but also leaves us with emotional touchstones that generate a desire to return to them.